Resources Search
10 of the world's beautiful libraries
09/02/2010, 11:01
For some people it’s castles with their noble history and crumbling towers, for others it’s abandoned factories or lost cities. But for those who enjoy reading, a huge beautiful library is a place of endless pleasure. Meet 10 of the biggest and most beautiful libraries around the globe.
Abbey Library of St.Gall
The Abbey Library of St. Gallen is the oldest library in Switzerland, and it is one of the earliest and most important monastic libraries in the world. Its extraordinary collection of books shows the development of European culture and documents the cultural achievments of the Abbey of St. Gallen from the eighth century to the dissolution of the monastery in 1805.
Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura
An extensive library completed in 1887 with more than 350,000 volumes, among them a rare 1572 edition of Luís de Camões's "Os Lusíadas." Located across from the Igreja de São Francisco de Paula, the entire collection is devoted to Portuguese literature. Most interesting is the reading room itself, which is naturally lit by a red, white and blue stained-glass skylamp.
Jay Walker's Private Library
What makes a private library baller? How about 3,600 square feet filled with landmark and bejeweled books, an original Sputnik 1 satellite hanging from the ceiling, a chandelier from a James Bond film, and three levels packed with more rare artifacts than your local history museum? As Wire revealed in a recent piece, you’ll find all of this and more in internet entrepreneur Jay Walker’s unbelievable New England crib. The founder of technology think tank Walker Digital, Jay Walker set out to create a space dedicated to the human imagination. The result is a functional fantasy land that serves as a shrine to creativity, and inspiration for anyone looking to build their own baller home library.
Rijksmuseum Research Library
The Rijksmuseum has the largest art history library in the Netherlands. Catalogues of auctions and exhibitions, trade and collection catalogues, as well as books, periodicals and annual reports relating to the museum collections have been collected without interruption since 1885. Books and periodicals cannot be borrowed by external visitors. All publications from the library's collection can be viewed in the reading room.
Library of Parliament
The Library of Parliament is the main information repository and research resource for the Parliament of Canada. The main branch of the library, which is the focus of this article, sits at the rear of the Centre Block, on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario, and is the last untouched part of that larger building's original incarnation, after it burned down in 1916. The library has been augmented and renovated a number of times since its construction in 1876, the last between 2002 and 2006, though the form and decor remain essentially authentic. The building today serves as a Canadian icon, and appears on the obverse of the Canadian ten-dollar bill.
Trinity College Library
Trinity is located in the centre of Dublin, Ireland, on College Green opposite the former Irish Houses of Parliament (now a branch of the Bank of Ireland). The campus occupies 190,000 m2 (47 acres), with many buildings, both old and new, ranged around large courts and two playing fields. The Library of Trinity College is a copyright library for Ireland and the United Kingdom, containing over 4.5 million books and significant quantities of maps, manuscripts and music.
Strahov Monastery - Theological Library
Founded in 1140 by Prince Vladislav II, the giant white Strahov Monastery looks down from its Petrin Hill vantage point over the busiest areas ofMala Strana. This tranquil setting was established for the Premonstratensians, followers of the teachings of St. Augustine. Destroyed by fire in 1258, it was rebuilt in Gothic style, with later Baroque additions.
The highlight of a visit to Strahov, despite its attractive location and meditative quality, is its famous library, comprised of one of the oldest monastic collections in the country. Located in the theological and philosophical halls, it is over 800 years old, and despite being ransacked by invading armies, it still holds over 16,000 books.
The Herzog August Bibliothek
The library in Wolfenbüttel was set up by Duke Julius in 1572. By 1666, under the scholarly book collector Duke August, it had become one of Europe’s largest libraries, with some 135,000 volumes on a very wide variety of subjects, ranging from astronomy to rhetoric and from history to physics. At that time, it was even said to be the eighth wonder of the world.
From the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, the library was managed by no less than Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (from 1690 to 1716) and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (from 1770 to 1781); as well as working as a librarian, the latter wrote his most significant works, Emilia Galotti and Nathan the Wise, in Wolfenbüttel.
George Peabody Library
The Peabody Library building, which opened in 1878, was designed by Baltimore architect Edmund G. Lind, in collaboration with the first provost, Dr. Nathaniel H. Morison. Renowned for its striking architectural interior, the Peabody Stack Room contains five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies, which rise dramatically to the skylight 61 feet above the floor. The ironwork was fabricated by the Bartlett-Robbins Company. The architecture of the Peabody Library is discussed in James D. Dilts and Catharine F. Black's Baltimore's Cast-Iron Buildings & Architectural Ironwork (1991).
Reflecting the scholarly interests of the nineteenth century, the library consists of a general reference collection on virtually every subject but music. The library contains more than 300,000 titles most of which date from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Notable strengths in the collection are archaeology, British art and architecture, British and American history, biography, English and American literature, Romance languages and literature, Greek and Latin classics, history of science, geography, and exploration and travel including a large map collection.
National Library
The National Library of Belarus (NLB) is a major universal research library with the status of information, social and cultural centre of the Republic. For more than 85 years the National Library of Belarus has been keeping the national heritage of the Belarusian people and providing information services to the society. Construction work on the new building for the NLB started in 2002 and was finished in 2006. The new Library building in high-tech style is a visiting card for the city of Minsk. The upper part looks like a diamond placed in the centre of a stylobate (the lower part of the building).
The Library collections are of historical and cultural value and are the most complete containing materials published in or about Belarus. There are 19 reading halls (2,060 seats), staff offices, administrative and technical rooms in the stylobate. More than 20 modern engineering networks combined into a technical complex provide for the functioning and security of the library building.
Abbey Library of St.Gall
The Abbey Library of St. Gallen is the oldest library in Switzerland, and it is one of the earliest and most important monastic libraries in the world. Its extraordinary collection of books shows the development of European culture and documents the cultural achievments of the Abbey of St. Gallen from the eighth century to the dissolution of the monastery in 1805.
Abbey Library St. Gallen, Switzerland
Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura
An extensive library completed in 1887 with more than 350,000 volumes, among them a rare 1572 edition of Luís de Camões's "Os Lusíadas." Located across from the Igreja de São Francisco de Paula, the entire collection is devoted to Portuguese literature. Most interesting is the reading room itself, which is naturally lit by a red, white and blue stained-glass skylamp.
Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Jay Walker's Private Library
What makes a private library baller? How about 3,600 square feet filled with landmark and bejeweled books, an original Sputnik 1 satellite hanging from the ceiling, a chandelier from a James Bond film, and three levels packed with more rare artifacts than your local history museum? As Wire revealed in a recent piece, you’ll find all of this and more in internet entrepreneur Jay Walker’s unbelievable New England crib. The founder of technology think tank Walker Digital, Jay Walker set out to create a space dedicated to the human imagination. The result is a functional fantasy land that serves as a shrine to creativity, and inspiration for anyone looking to build their own baller home library.
Jay Walker's Private Library
Rijksmuseum Research Library
The Rijksmuseum has the largest art history library in the Netherlands. Catalogues of auctions and exhibitions, trade and collection catalogues, as well as books, periodicals and annual reports relating to the museum collections have been collected without interruption since 1885. Books and periodicals cannot be borrowed by external visitors. All publications from the library's collection can be viewed in the reading room.
Rijkmuseum Library, Amsterdam
Library of Parliament
The Library of Parliament is the main information repository and research resource for the Parliament of Canada. The main branch of the library, which is the focus of this article, sits at the rear of the Centre Block, on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario, and is the last untouched part of that larger building's original incarnation, after it burned down in 1916. The library has been augmented and renovated a number of times since its construction in 1876, the last between 2002 and 2006, though the form and decor remain essentially authentic. The building today serves as a Canadian icon, and appears on the obverse of the Canadian ten-dollar bill.
Library of Parliament, Ottawa, Canada
Trinity College Library
Trinity is located in the centre of Dublin, Ireland, on College Green opposite the former Irish Houses of Parliament (now a branch of the Bank of Ireland). The campus occupies 190,000 m2 (47 acres), with many buildings, both old and new, ranged around large courts and two playing fields. The Library of Trinity College is a copyright library for Ireland and the United Kingdom, containing over 4.5 million books and significant quantities of maps, manuscripts and music.
Trinity College Library, AKA, The Long Room, Dublin, Ireland
Strahov Monastery - Theological Library
Founded in 1140 by Prince Vladislav II, the giant white Strahov Monastery looks down from its Petrin Hill vantage point over the busiest areas ofMala Strana. This tranquil setting was established for the Premonstratensians, followers of the teachings of St. Augustine. Destroyed by fire in 1258, it was rebuilt in Gothic style, with later Baroque additions.
Strahov Monastery - Theological Library, Prague, Czech Republic
The highlight of a visit to Strahov, despite its attractive location and meditative quality, is its famous library, comprised of one of the oldest monastic collections in the country. Located in the theological and philosophical halls, it is over 800 years old, and despite being ransacked by invading armies, it still holds over 16,000 books.
The Herzog August Bibliothek
The library in Wolfenbüttel was set up by Duke Julius in 1572. By 1666, under the scholarly book collector Duke August, it had become one of Europe’s largest libraries, with some 135,000 volumes on a very wide variety of subjects, ranging from astronomy to rhetoric and from history to physics. At that time, it was even said to be the eighth wonder of the world.
Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel, Germany
From the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, the library was managed by no less than Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (from 1690 to 1716) and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (from 1770 to 1781); as well as working as a librarian, the latter wrote his most significant works, Emilia Galotti and Nathan the Wise, in Wolfenbüttel.
George Peabody Library
The Peabody Library building, which opened in 1878, was designed by Baltimore architect Edmund G. Lind, in collaboration with the first provost, Dr. Nathaniel H. Morison. Renowned for its striking architectural interior, the Peabody Stack Room contains five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies, which rise dramatically to the skylight 61 feet above the floor. The ironwork was fabricated by the Bartlett-Robbins Company. The architecture of the Peabody Library is discussed in James D. Dilts and Catharine F. Black's Baltimore's Cast-Iron Buildings & Architectural Ironwork (1991).
George Peabody Library, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Reflecting the scholarly interests of the nineteenth century, the library consists of a general reference collection on virtually every subject but music. The library contains more than 300,000 titles most of which date from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Notable strengths in the collection are archaeology, British art and architecture, British and American history, biography, English and American literature, Romance languages and literature, Greek and Latin classics, history of science, geography, and exploration and travel including a large map collection.
National Library
The National Library of Belarus (NLB) is a major universal research library with the status of information, social and cultural centre of the Republic. For more than 85 years the National Library of Belarus has been keeping the national heritage of the Belarusian people and providing information services to the society. Construction work on the new building for the NLB started in 2002 and was finished in 2006. The new Library building in high-tech style is a visiting card for the city of Minsk. The upper part looks like a diamond placed in the centre of a stylobate (the lower part of the building).
National Library, Belarus
The Library collections are of historical and cultural value and are the most complete containing materials published in or about Belarus. There are 19 reading halls (2,060 seats), staff offices, administrative and technical rooms in the stylobate. More than 20 modern engineering networks combined into a technical complex provide for the functioning and security of the library building.
Rol.vn
